


The Haunting of 221b

by EmmyAngua



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Big Brother Mycroft, Gen, Ghosts, Halloween, Haunting, Holmes Brothers, Kid Sherlock, Plot Twists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-05-01 00:44:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5185727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmmyAngua/pseuds/EmmyAngua
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time Sherlock had believed in ghosts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Haunting of 221b

**Author's Note:**

> This is a little late for Halloween as it was the winning entry for a scary story competition I ran (yes, I know, somewhat awkward to win your own competition.) 
> 
> The idea came to me after I noticed that there aren't many fics about 221b being haunted, which surely would be an interesting trope.

  
Once upon a time Sherlock had believed in ghosts. He was six, but that’s really no excuse.  
  
The headless woman had caused him particular trouble.

In his mind she had paper white skin and a flowing white dress, un-marred by the bloody stump of her neck. He still remembers the path from his childhood bedroom to the bathroom: twenty-five of his child-sized footsteps to the end of the corridor and then a left turn and another ten. He’d spent _weeks_ inching along that corridor, convinced that when he turned the corner she'd be waiting for him…  
  
At night he’d he’d suffocated under his blankets afraid that she might reach into his bed in the night and seize him. He woke up screaming, only soothed by the reassuring promises of his mother that if there was a ghost it would have to get through her before it touched a hair on his head.  
  
Repulsive as it is to admit, it was a perfectly normal phase to have gone through. But Sherlock isn’t six anymore and there’s no such thing as ghosts.  
  
Yet _something_ is haunting him.

 

\---

  
  
It began with the knocking: a tap tap tap on his bedroom door that got him up (cursing Mrs. Hudson for the disturbance) only to yank the door open onto an empty corridor.  
  
_Tap tap tap._  
  
_Tap tap tap._  
  
After the third time it happened he started to take serious notice.  
  
There are no real patterns. It disturbs him in other parts of the flat, from windows, and once even at a crime scene. It doesn’t always rouse him from sleep: once (to the astonishment of John) he’d thrown open the bathroom door, naked and with shampoo dripping from his hair to answer the knock on the bathroom door. At other times the tapping on the windows has halted his violin practice and yanked him from his mind palace.  
  
He could have handled it, if the tapping was the only disturbance, but then the baby started crying.

 

\---

 

  
The new neighbours have produced a small child. Sherlock knows this because their child doesn’t stop crying from morning to night, and then at night it really outperforms itself. It starts on a Wednesday morning when – fortunately – John is away at some long and boring conference. Sherlock isn’t bothered for himself, but it has to stop before John gets back.  
  
John has watched his pregnant fiance’s head explode as the sniper targeted her through their living room window. His grief is lessening, but a crying baby could send him spiralling back down into it. John is due back on Friday evening. On Friday morning Sherlock grits his teeth against the constant wailing and marches over to next door with a stack of baby books under his arm.  
  
“We’re not religious!” the man who answers the door snaps upon seeing Sherlock on his doorstep.  
  
“I’m your neighbour,” Sherlock replies curtly.  
  
“Hmph!” the man grunts. “You make enough noise with that damn violin, don’t you?”  
  
This is so patently unfair that Sherlock’s mouth drops open. “I’m here about the noise from _your_ baby.”  
  
The man blinks.  
  
“What baby?”  
  
Sherlock’s mind is already racing ahead. The man’s in his sixties, bought the place from Mrs. Turner, is a former civil engineer, married but no children.  
  
_No children._  
  
“There’s been a crying baby-“ he begins weakly.  
  
“I’ve not heard anything,” the man snaps. “Aside from _your_ violin at three in the sodding morning.”  
  
He slams the door.  
  
Sherlock never hears the baby again, but things get worse.

 

 

\---

 

  
For several weeks Sherlock grows used to the sudden terror of red sniper dots appearing without warning on John’s chest, even when John’s standing somewhere no sniper could aim at him. John claims Sherlock’s seeing things, blames it on daft things like the glint of sunlight off a watch or the glare of the TV. 

 

 

\---

 

  
On one memorable occasion he opens the fridge door (the fridge is perfectly clean, with nothing more worrying in there than some skin samples) to find Mary’s bloody head sitting on the middle shelf.  
  
_A headless woman waiting for him…_  
  
When he opens the door it’s gone again.  
  
John doesn’t understand Sherlock’s utter mania that night, no doubt he suspects Sherlock is back on the drugs, Sherlock hasn’t acted like this since Baskerville. Still, in the cold light of the next day Sherlock hits upon an idea: he takes the fridge apart searching for a mechanism that might release a hallucinogenic.  
  
He finds none and Mrs. Hudson is NOT pleased when she sees the remains of her fridge.  
  
Sherlock stops sleeping, becomes so unpleasant to be around that John spends more nights than he’d like sheltering in the pub after one of Sherlock’s diatribes has pushed him away. Sherlock prowls stairs at night _daring_ any ghostly woman to approach him…  
  
This is a trick, a clever trick, and he will work out who is responsible for it.  
  
It’s three in the morning and he’s just reached the landing outside John’s room when he sees the figure at the bottom of the stairs. A woman in white.  
  
For a second he’s six years old again, but his adult self recognises the figure, recognises the dress: it’s Mary. At least her head is attached to her body, though the bullet has blasted a large chunk out of it.  
  
She raises her hands and staggers forwards up the stairs towards Sherlock.  
  
Sherlock reacts on pure six-year-old instinct. He flees through the nearest door, which happens to be John’s bedroom, and slams it behind him, staring wildly around as though the figure might follow him…  
  
“Sherlock?”  
  
Sherlock actually cries out at the voice, calming at once as he realises that it’s John.  
  
John. Who is in his bed.  
  
John who he’s just woken up  
  
John who is blinking in attractive confusion at him.  
  
“Sorry, wrong… bedroom,” Sherlock says.  
  
It’s an appalling excuse but John’s eyes are hazy with dreams and he accepts the lie easily, sinking back into sleep at once.  
  
Sherlock sits on John’s bedroom floor until the sun comes up.

 

 

\---

 

  
Mycroft cured Sherlock of his terror of the headless woman.  
  
Their parents had gone out and (unwisely) left Mycroft in charge. Their mother had funny ideas about it helping them bond. Sherlock would later blame this early position of total power as being the root cause of at least eighty percent of Mycroft’s bossiness.  
  
Mycroft had clearly grown bored of constantly reassuring his brother that the headless woman did not exist, because on that night he had a suggestion.  
  
“Do you want to talk to her?”  
  
“Who?” Sherlock had wrinkled his nose.  
  
“The headless woman.”  
  
Just the idea of it had made Sherlock feel sick with terror, but he’d never backed down from a challenge laid down by his brother in his entire six years of life.  
  
“How?”  
  
Back in those days a Ouija board was a fun game for all the family. Their parents had occasionally pulled it out during the odd dinner party for a giggle. Mycroft set it up between them and retrieved their father’s emergency powercut candles and lit them, switching off the lights and giving them just enough glow to see the letters on the board.  
  
Mycroft showed Sherlock how to hold the pointer, but refused to take part himself. “If I hold it you’ll think it’s a trick.”  
  
Sherlock nodded unsurely and then, biting his look, wordlessly asked his brother for some clue of what he was supposed to do.  
  
“Close your eyes and concentrate on her. When you think she’s here, ask a question.”  
  
Sherlock did as instructed. He screwed his eyes shut, pressed down on the pointer hard, and focused on the figure. For a long time nothing seemed to happen and then he felt a chill… that had to be her.  
  
“Can you hear me?” he asked softly.  
  
Suddenly the pointer jerked and Sherlock was so surprised that he almost let go. His eyes snapped open and he watched in amazement as the pointer moved across the board by _itself_.  
  
YES  
  
He was a bit stumped at what to ask next. He was vaguely aware that one didn’t get the chance to talk to headless women often.  
  
“What’s your name?”  
  
He felt the tug again!  
  
J – A – N - E  
  
“Wh- what do you want?”  
  
K – I – L – L  
  
K – I – L – L  
  
K – I – L – L  
  
Sherlock, to his everlasting shame, fainted.

 

 

\---

 

  
When six year old Sherlock had woken up the lights were on, the Ouija board was packed away, and Mycroft was looking rather pale. With hindsight, having the brother he was babysitting pass out had probably been a bit terrifying for him. In hindsight Mycroft had utterly deserved a scare of his own.  
  
When he realised that Sherlock was awake and hadn’t suffered any serious damage, he became severe.  
  
“This silliness with the headless woman has to stop!” he said. “I was trying to teach you a lesson.”  
  
“You saw it, she talked to me!” said Sherlock hotly, ready to defend his headless woman even if she did wish to kill him.  
  
“You talked to yourself!” Mycroft snapped.  
  
He dropped a copy of their father’s Radio Times into Sherlock’s lap. It was an old copy from several months ago and the page was opened to an article about a new television programme: _‘The Haunting of Grange Park’_  
  
“Our parents watched that programme – dreck that it was – when it was on. You were fighting your bedtime in the room directly above. You merely picked up details of the ghost from the sounds you heard. Read the description.”  
  
Sherlock did so.  
  
_‘In this thrilling drama Lord Westley and his new wife are haunted by the headless ghost of his former nanny, Jane Smith…”_  
  
And there, at the top of the article was a picture of his ghost.  
  
“But – but you saw it. I didn’t move the pointer. I swear!”  
  
Mycroft looked pitying. “You _thought_ you didn’t. These things are often our subconscious at work. You’d picked up the name from the bits you’d overheard and you’re brain supplied them, tricked your body into pushing the pointer. That’s how charlatans make their money.”  
  
He gripped Sherlock’s shoulders. “ _There’s nothing out there that’s going to get you_ ,” he said firmly. “Always look for the rational explanation.”

 

 

\---

 

  
Years later, hounded by the strange haunting of 221b, Sherlock considers his brother’s advice again.  
  
He doesn’t believe in ghosts, but he does believe in the power of his mind. Perhaps the sounds and tricks are his own mind trying to tell him something. Perhaps there’s some threat his conscious self can’t work out.  
  
Maybe he doesn’t need to communicate with the dead, he needs to communicate with himself.  
  
Mrs. Hudson still has a Ouija board (under an ancient Monopoly game and a rather risqué set of chess pieces.) He strolls into her flat while she’s distracted and takes it. John is out at the pub, seething over another diatribe from Sherlock. He might as well do it now.  
  
Sherlock has no candles and so he sets the board up in the kitchen and lights the Bunsen burner to a low, flickering flame. He might as well enter into the spirit of the thing. With the board set up and his finger in place he waits for some… feeling… with his eyes closed.  
  
At once he feels something behind him and the pointer jerks under his fingers.  
  
“Anyone there?” he asks, trying to sound slightly above it all.  
  
YES  
  
“Are you the cause of the things I’ve been seeing and hearing?”  
  
YES  
  
“Is this… my subconscious self?”  
  
NO  
  
“Well I didn’t expect you to admit it.” He hesitates before his next question. “Do you have a message?”  
  
The pointer jerked so sharply that Sherlock was pulled forward.  
  
YES  
  
“Then tell me.”  
  
Slowly the pointer slides across the board to the arc of letters.  
  
I  
  
It slides again.  
  
O  
  
And then again.  
  
U  
  
Suddenly the Bunsen burner cuts out and the table underneath the board starts to shake as the thing responsible for Sherlock’s haunting repeats its message over and over.  
  
I - O - U  
  
I - O - U  
  
I - O - U

  
The End


End file.
